Press Releases

May 28, 2009 -- The American College of Assisted Reproduction and Adoption Lawyers (ACARAL), a not-for-profit organization, was created to share ideas, promote and maintain ethical standards, provide resources to the general public, and advance understanding in these constantly evolving areas of law. ACARAL's newly designed website is www.acaral.org.

Fertility and adoption-related issues have never been more a part of the public's consciousness than they are right now. From Octomom to Madonna in Malawi, from same-sex marriage and the raising of children in non-traditional households to the rapidly growing business of reproductive tourism, more than ever people from around the globe have turned their attention to how adoption and assisted reproductive technology actually works.

ACARAL is the premier resource for finding the most experienced lawyers in the fields of third party reproduction and adoption - highly specialized and continually changing areas of the law which impact people's lives both in the US and abroad. ACARAL is unique because each member's law practice is limited entirely to assisted reproduction and/or adoption. There are no general practitioners in ACARAL. Each lawyer member has handled a minimum of two hundred adoption or assisted reproduction matters within the last five years, and typically many more. ACARAL members are committed to following the highest ethical standards of responsible lawyering.

Acaral.org - the website - is designed to serve prospective adoptive parents, birth mothers and birth fathers, adoptees, prospective egg donor candidates, current egg donors, surrogate mothers (gestational carriers and traditional carriers), intended parents, donor egg recipients, others within the legal and medical professions, and the public at-large. The ACARAL member directory will allow viewers to choose from qualified assisted reproduction and adoption lawyers, and to review full descriptions of their law practices and backgrounds. The Resources and Links pages will refer readers to sound and reliable information on domestic and international adoption, egg donation, surrogacy, embryo donation, storage and custody, as well as other related topics. Lawyer members and others in these fields will also contribute to ACARAL's blog, which will offer timely individual and group position statements on topical matters of interest which shape public opinion and affect public policy.